Limits on amplification of picosecond pulses by using semiconductor laser traveling-wave amplifiers

Author

Lee, Chang-Hee ; Delfyett, Peter J.

Author_Institution

Bell Commun. Res., Red Bank, NJ, USA

Volume

27

Issue

5

fYear

1991

fDate

5/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1110

Lastpage

1114

Abstract

The limiting factors in picosecond pulse amplification by semiconductor traveling-wave laser amplifiers are investigated, including the effects of the spontaneous emission. For the amplifier with a negligible amount of spontaneous emission, amplification is limited by the energy saturation for low-repetition-rate pulses, while the power saturation is the limiting factor for high-repetition-rate pulses. The spontaneous emission decreases both the signal gain of the amplifier and the signal-to-noise ratio considerably. The effective gain recovery time and the effective saturation energy are strong functions of the input pulse energy, and the amount of the spontaneous emission

Keywords

high-speed optical techniques; semiconductor junction lasers; superradiance; effective saturation energy; energy saturation; gain recovery time; high-repetition-rate pulses; input pulse energy; limiting factors; low-repetition-rate pulses; picosecond pulse amplification; power saturation; semiconductor laser traveling-wave amplifiers; signal gain; signal-to-noise ratio; spontaneous emission; Laser mode locking; Laser noise; Optical amplifiers; Optical pulse generation; Optical pulses; Pulse amplifiers; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Solid lasers; Spontaneous emission;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.83361

Filename

83361